Hey, welcome to the Christy Gas live from the compound. Shall we spin the wheel my friends? Oh that's tricky. It's landed half on the pals, which of course refers to people who are my actual friends and the music makers, and that can only mean one thing. The luminous Claire Boat, which is an award winning musician, author and actress. But I like to refer to her as a gold standard see the listener Encourager and cupboard Wiper. I'm just so
thrilled that she is here because I love her. Welcome to the Christy Cast Claire Boat, which, well, gosh.
It's a thrill to be here. Finally, what do you mean, cupboard Wiper? Is that just a way of describing that I love you?
Yes, you came over to my house recently because I had made for the express reason and it was clear. I'd made it very clear what you were coming over. Apart from that I needed to see you. I'd made pumpkin SCons from my grandmother's recipe, and there was no there was one person that popped into my head that would enjoy them with me, and it was you. You came over and we ate the pumpkin SCons. Eventually, and
then we talked and talked and talked. And the whole time you were cleaning my you were washing down.
The front of my cupboard. It's quite It actually sounds quite rude when you say that, but as a Dutch woman, this is just so normal to me. My mother and I we always stood and talked and we did little bits and pieces. And you know, it was my fault. There was pumpkin scon on the front of the cupboard because you showed me an incredible recipe. I never considered, really considered, no, well it's a Queensland thing. Yeah, it's beautiful.
I loved watching you clean my cupboards and I thought, ah, that's another reason I think that we love each is you might be like me in that you can't think unless you're doing something. So I have learned that about myself that I can't come up with anything unless I'm doing something else.
Yeah. I do really like to be a sort of I find my body likes to move and do. But this could also just be the fact that I am a mum of three and we run a small business and there's always been a lot to do. But if I really reflect back on childhood, I was always a bit of a busy person. I thought, what a wonderful world, let's get into it. There was always something to do. Yes, what sort of child were you? I was brought up the youngest of five. Oh gosh, I get emotional thinking
about it enough, because you got a croak in my throat. Now. I was the youngest of five. We were all born eighteen months apart, and I was really lucky. I'm often asked, did you come from a creative family, and on a traditional judgment, perhaps no. My mum was a nurse, my dad worked in the law. But my parents were deeply loving and very creative people, and so I remember my childhood is actually a place of great fun. You know.
Mum was a kind of woman who should give you a can of paint and say, go on, off, you go paint the wall. Oh we had lots of Brussels sprout fights or you know, and so on. But it was also really difficult.
How that Why was it difficult?
Because my sister died Rowie. Yeah, so she was two years older than me when she died. When I thought we'd just get into it when she I was five and she was seven, and my parents very fortunately had very strong faith, so they stayed together, held the family together. But ROWI had been sick for a long time and we really missed it, and I think that made me and my siblings really close. But that's the truth of it. That was part of the waters that we grew up in.
When something catastrophic like that happens to a small child, how important is talking about it.
I don't know as a child that it was terrifically important to talk about it, But as an adult and someone who then became a parent myself, it's been really important because she's in the room with me and with us always, so to not talk about her, you know, in beloved company, or to pretend that she wasn't there is just not possible for me. Her photos were always all over the house. We always spoke of her, and we still do. You know, she was absolutely glorious And.
Who did she look like? Funny if I've seen your siblings and you're all and I've seen your parents, and I'm obsessed with genetics.
Yeah, you know when you're a kid and you have like Holly Hobby pillow cases or so on. Right, Yeah, So in my childhood mind, she always looked like Holli hobby. You know, it's so funny. So she sort of if I look back at the photos, now I see my mom, I see my dad, I see my brother, I see my sisters. But she really was her own unit, you know, And she was kind of born that way. She was super bright, super husky, super bossy and super kind. Yeah,
but a really smart kid. And you know, I think a lot of a lot of who we are as a child remains who we are as adults. I find that more and more as I sort of head into this. I'm almost fifty now, Swanny, and you gonna have fiftieth if you'll come, my will, but I've come. I'll organize it for here. Okay, done, I'm.
Good at that.
Should we go back to Europe like you did last time? Oh my god? What though? I've heard you say this that we you know, every decade we feel like we're done. So at thirty we might feel like we're done, At forty we might feel like we've done, and over at fifty we feel like we're done. And that the friendship that we have always reminds me to not fall to that story, like who is it who you said yes to? Big Brother? Twenty one years ago on a crazy whim,
a crazy whim, and it changed my life. I think. Yeah, So as we move into fifty, we keep saying yes, and we bring the ones we love.
You say yes, and you know what I can, I can sort of, you know, attribute that element of my like sort of life vibe to my dad, Can you yes? Because I remember I think he turned It was on his seventieth birthday or something, and I said to him, what can you tell me? You're so far down the trap? What can you tell me that you know?
For sure? What a sweet daughter that you would ask that question? Good for you?
Well he really thought about it too, which I appreciated, and he said, I reckon. The most important thing I've learned is that if you ever hear yourself saying to yourself, oh, you're too old for that.
You're not what great advice?
Yeah, And that has because we do say things. We do say that to ourselves. Absolutely are not you're too old for that, you can't do that. That that horse has bolted, That horse has never bolted.
I couldn't agree more. I had this through recently of making this new work. It's about everyday creativity.
Yes, we are going to get onto that. It's an audible course, audible original.
Yeah, but what it gave me was an opportunity to speak to my friends and my brain's trust in a really different way. Yeah. Do you ask really direct questions like do you consider yourself creative? If not, why not? What dreams do you still have left that you'd love to do if only you could or gave yourself permission?
Okay, let's backtrack for a second. I want to give a proper plug to this audible original.
You're the first person I've spoken to it. I know. Give me if I'm clumsy.
I know because it's only he is making it.
I know.
It's only been available since the first of December. Go get it. If you think it's for you, it is for you. Like as my dad says, if you're saying to yourself, oh no, that's not for them, I can't do that.
You can. I would find your creative courage, and it is if you want it, It's there for you.
And creativity is when I think of creativity, I think of you you've become I'm like a champion for the cause, and I think to use creative as an adjective about yourself sometimes feels and I don't know if it's an Australian thing, feels up yourself.
Yeah, that's a really really common misconception. We think it's for special people who do special things through special gifts. We failed to realize that we taught ourselves to walk, to talk, to think through this act of creativity, bringing two or more things together, smushing them and then creating something new. That's what you did with your grandmother's scones, Like, if you think about it, sure, we're just making SCons in the every day, but you're bringing in a memory
and love and you're sharing that with me. That's in itself a worthy creative act. And the more of them we can get into our lives are more meaningful.
It is what happens to us as children, growing up and learning how to survive, that creativity becomes not important.
It's sometimes more that we are shamed into playing small because of our adaptive responses. So we are pack animals. I'm someone who has researched this quite deeply because I've always sung. We sung normally naturally in our family. No one was a professional singer, but we sang harmony. My mom was from Holland you know, around the sink and at church and all the rest of it, and at birth days. You know, someone always threw on a harmony.
It wasn't beaten out of me. But as an adult who worked in music, I would so often meet strangers after shows who would talk to me about their relationship with their voice. They say, I can't sing. And I always found this curious because my training is that if you can speak, you can sing.
You can speak, you can sing, that's my man truck correct.
And I can't run like you know, you say bolt, but I can run. You know, there's within our own capacity we can all engage in this act. So I got curious, and I found a lot of people had And this is just one particular story, but it's typical of what happens. They shared their voice at a certain stage, perhaps they were four, five, six seven, and they were shamed in some way, told to stand at the back, why don't you mind, you know, be quiet? Oh my god, who's that?
And or they shamed themselves. We're like, oh, I'm not as good as it. I don't sound like Tina Arena. That means I can't do it.
God blessed, none of us sound like Tina Arena. No, she's she was a Reek. She was the one who was in James and she made the song out of it, you know, like she was the one who was Sorrento mooning. I mean, we can't be Tina, but that's a really great point. So to find our own unique longing and to have the courage to attempt that in our own everyday lives. What I say is it's fair enough. You
feel vulnerable. We pack animals. We don't want to stand out from the crowd necessarily in a way that will bring us, you know, vulnerability in an unsafe place.
Potential ridicule. It's like, oh god, correct, I'm two steps ahead here.
I'm going to sing.
It's going to sound average, and people are going to think I'm shitty idiot.
Exactly, So you do it a shittiot. That's brilliant. Did you make that out? I just see active creative. That's a portamentteau you just made there. That's got a name. But this is about trying it in your home where it is safe, and having a play with the notion that maybe you two are creative, maybe you two can can benefit from Really there's extraordinary health benefits related to creativity, and it's all you know. The research is there.
Now tell us what they are well.
For example, cognitive decline in elderly people, it's so often like my father had dementia, it was so hard to know how to connect back with him. But anyone who's ever been on TikTok YouTube or knows this from themselves. If I put on a song that was familiar to him to his childhood, all of a sudden he could sing,
he could speak. And if you put a if you put a a if you basically scan are scanning someone, If you're brain scanning someone while they're singing at that stage of decline, you see some really interesting things in the brain. So it's one of you know, in therapeutic settings that can be really useful. We know an end of life care, it's useful. We know that even when people are recovering from any sort of major trauma or change in their life, creativity can help us need it
back together. Even knitting itself is there's a I think it was a UCLA study around the health benefits of knitting. Don't quote me, because I've spent two years researching this. All the things we intuitively know about. Oh I enjoy doing that and I feel good, and then we tell ourselves it's too small. I say, do it anyway, because you are doing yourself a real service.
Yes, I love to sing. It's not about how it sounds. It's about how it makes me feel.
It's amazing, isn't it.
Yeah, And I can thank thank you for that because you've always been very like sings, wanty sing. So on the back of that encouragement, I have a microphone at home set up ready to go, and I'll just grab it and it feels like a Whenever I do grab it feels like such an event and such a treat just for me. It feels like a treat.
These things are like companions and friends in our lives, and they're there for us in our hardest times as well as our most playful times. Every single time you do a show and think a new thought, that too, is an act of creativity. And there are people who say, look, I mean the way I made this was in conjunction with the brain's trust. So a crew of about one hundred people who over the years i'd you know, spoken to about creativity or we'd worked on some stuff together.
Or they come to the workshops and so on. The point is that each of us have these different propensities. You have voice, I have voice. We have these different longings. But it's not even just about those you know, traditionally artistic things. It's really about bringing in newness and novelty and new thought, which can bring hope. So anytime you think hmm, instead of oh god, it's over for me, I'm fifty, what if you if you throw in this little thing got a question there, and ask what if
it's not? What if it's not what if that's not true?
What if I can actually use all the amazing experiences and lessons and time I've spent getting to know myself up till now, Yeah, to do more things.
Well, you are a classic example of that. You call it your midlife crisis. But really again, you know you recommend it to everyun Why.
I really do, because once you have it, I mean midlife crisis. I just don't know why we have to make everything so negative, you know what I mean? It's like it's an awakening and an ownership and a like falling in love with yourself properly where you are because what it is.
Correct and because of our negativity negativity bias, which is just part of our evolutionary inheritance. It's part of what keeps us safe. We need examples of people who are still making brave choices and surviving them, only surviving them, but thriving them. So I remember one summer a couple of years back, when you would have said maybe you were in that period of time. I was having a
real lull. You know, I was missing my mom, she'd passed away during COVID, and I didn't really want to I couldn't really play the game, you know, I couldn't be around people that I had to tap dance for or pretend I wasn't feeling what I was feeling. And yeah, you're someone who I can be very honest with. And you showed up and it was kind of like you brought, you know, some treat but what you brought was yourself
in this stage of exploration. You've been walking, you've been finding treasures, and it lit a little spark in me. It was one of the things that helped me start turning around. The story that you know that we all get when we are missing someone or angrieful when there's been too much change, which is that, Gosh, what's the point? You know? What are we doing? All the rest of it? Often we don't know, and the way we find out is to get walking, get into action, do something new.
See how we feel. That's what I want to encourage people to do.
Yeah, is that when you started your sour dough journey? Oh god, it's like having a newborn baby.
So some context here. We had a conversation last week that picked up on, Yes, what was one of the grand obsessions of that deep dark ride, the Lockdown. I loved it, don't get me wrong, and it was a friend to us. Sour dough. I mean in the we have actually a scene with sour dough in this audible original where the sour dough is still calling from the fridge. I'm still higher, I'm sleeping. You can wake me up at any point once you what to do with me,
That's right. So we considered, you know, is it time to revive it now? I lived in fitzro North at the time, and there was, in fact, this is twenty twenty, a deep desire to make our own bread and a deep shortage of sour dough. Starter. I mean, it had been spread through thin throughout the neighborhood, and I had the good fortune of coming across a rest buy Sylvia Coloqua, Oh Sylvia, who reminded in her book she said, you can start your own, you know, you just need sultanas and some water.
I'm sorry, what a sourdough starter's rare as hen's teeth.
I mean, it's wonderful to get that inherited one from Red Beard Baker as a friend of mine. Steve has spoiled me with that deeper strain. I have to get that for you. I have to get that from him. Yeah, I've got some for you. But it does make a bit of an ask. You know, there are sort of you can just start with a yeasty bread and it doesn't ask you to feed it each day. Sourdough does ask you to feed it each day or else put it in the fridge and remember that it's there. So
I understand your hesitation. I think it's interesting. Sourdough as a gives a lot an element. Yeah, yeah, tell me more.
I was like, why am I doing this? Because like, why am I actually doing it? Because Philippers, for example, Wonderful Bakery or aa A Bakery. Oh yes, there was no shortage of bread, right, I could get bread even in lockdown. So I was like, why am I doing this? And I think, for me, and tell me if you think this is mad, I'm curious. Likely it is doubt it because we saw so few people. Yes, and I get a lot personally from caring for other people and
showing that care. I get that I do that for myself. Really, I think I got obsessed with sourdough because I wanted something new to look after.
I understand, and you won't be surprised. Really when you think about it. That is the perfect and a very natural and normal response in a time where everything was out of control and we actually needed small friends with I mean sour dough. It is alive that you know, it is a it is a fermented good. Anything can happen. So you had a random creative adventure. Anything could have happened with the sour dough. It seemed really small and
silly in conversation. But a friend and neighbor of mine, Sharon Flynn, who has an organization a company now called the Fermentary, and they make my favorite bubbly drinks. So I came. You know, I really enjoyed this sauer Kraut and so on. Yeah, she made But then you know, she ended up being a neighbor and I got to have a really great chat with her, and she's written some beautiful books. She came to her what she calls really a deep and profound relationship with fomenting and with
the process of it. And it sounds silly, but you know, when you meet Sharon, you'll understand like she is fizzing with life and liveliness. She came to that at a really difficult time when she was in transition, was in a foreign country. She really didn't she was caring for her children and she really needed company. And seriously, it was like having you know, a company there really and that makes.
Me feel better about my inkling that it wasn't about the bread.
Not necessarily, and it is. There are actually, again all these health benefits that are really clear when it comes to gut health. And so there's something instinctive as well. You wanted to do something good, something you could control in a way, something that was collaborative and somewhere to be.
I had alarms to feed and it was like a real lifetime gotch.
I want to talk about.
Your book, Go on because I find that, like, when was it released twenty nineteen, that's five years ago. And the annoying thing with books is the people that you know are going to read it. I haven't read it, do you know what I mean? I think we need to talk about books more because they're permanent. They're in the world, but a big song and dance is made when they're released, and then no.
One ever talks about it.
But the important thing is still there. Yes, I loved your book so much that there are a few things. By the way, it's called Your Own kind of Girl, Thanks Monny, and it's still available. If you haven't read it,
you must, like you absolutely must. Very rarely I will start consuming someone else's creativity, whether it's a book or a movie or whatever series, and when I know that it is matching my soul, I get so greedy about it, and then I have to recalibrate my consumption of that because it happens so rarely that I don't want to be greedy. I want it to last longer. And I was a sort of kid that, you know, Easter Sunday,
I'd get my Easter eggs. They would be gone by Sunday, lunchtime, you know, go to the show, get my requisite two showbacks. They'd be gone by the time the train pulled in afterwards.
I never understood how anyone could do anything else.
Though, But then I missed it the next outwakeup, and I what I wouldn't give that raspberry sunny Boy that I didn't really appreciate because it was coming in after two packets of sandboard chips. So now I actively control my consumption of things that make me feel good because I wanted to last longer. Discipline, I know. And with your book, after the first chapter, I went right, okay, don't lose your mind, just wanting did you really yes?
And you know me quite well. Yes, we're surprised. Did you did you feel yourself in the Yes?
I felt myself in it. And the way that you write is so like you are. Oh, I just never wanted it to end lovely.
Please buy the book, you know, I've got it. Are you writing another book? Yeah? And I've this sometimes happens. I'm a little like, I'm a little lush and in some ways too when I hit on like find your creative courage, transform your life using everyday creativity. It was just this sort of funny little title, sweet little title, I'll do something useful. It was three years ago when I fished it to Audible off the back of doing an audiobook with them, audiobook of that book that we mentioned.
And my mom is one of the characters in the audiobook, meaning she does a swear swear warning and she shares her apple tart recipe. But I thought it would be a small project that I know the content so well. I have this conversation with so many people about hey, have you considered maybe you are creative? Why don't you try this out? And how's this for a random creative adventure?
Just you know, it took me down the most interesting and profoundly fascinating rabbit hole and connection with strangers and conversations and delight and really trying to find a good argument for what I believe is the most sustainable, renewable, underrated, squandered, ever available affordable power that each of us have within us, which is this power of a new thought of creativity. That it overwhelmed the book that I was going to write, I overwrote. And I tell you where, so, you asked,
am I writing another book? Yeah? I've written a number of books since twenty nineteen's release, I am a little overwhelmed by which story to tell next, Which is the most useful, which is the most present, And this is a really classic conundrum, and I think the trick is to just get it out there, whatever it is.
What are the stories that we are going to get from Claire.
The books that I wrote during this time, and it was really again just out of twenty twenty was about small l acts of pleasure for all kinds of weather, and this was in a way I kind of make him do book that told stories, and it was about how we can survive difficult things sometimes by bringing in a sense of play. So it was in line with the work that I'm doing now with Audible. But a part of me then had to grieve my mother and grieve changes in life and grieve look just learn to
live used to it. Yeah, it's new ways to live well without you know, these things that were so familiar in our lives and we've changed. So that became then a really big story to this story of how do we live well? And for me that was around many many things. But there's another part that people just want me to tell the next part of the memoir. I only really wrote the first memoir up until the point of having my first daughter, Asher, and that's something I
wanted to write too. So I think maybe we need to just put it. Like I know, we all have our own sort of you know, trip wise or rabbit holes that we fall down, and I've fallen down one and I actually need a bloody good talking too. Actually really yeah, And I think if I were going to draw me in a champion, think of yourself, think of our mates. Maybe Catherine Debonie, who's a wonderful encourager of writers, share a work workshops called Gunners. You know, I'm going to write and so on.
But I just ordered the cards I've got has made these beautiful, you know, prompt cards.
So my problem is I've written far, far, far too much and I need someone well, I need to tell myself to just put something out there.
So I can see fun I can see a funnel and there's all these ideas and that it's it's blocked. The idea there, what do you want.
To use twenty through? Oh, I put it on the spot. I want to hear all of this. So it's it's really frustrating when the very thing we know we should do, and I would advise another mate to do, which is just start with one yes, sah. I've got to this sort of crossroads with myself over it. But really I think I wanted to end twenty twenty five back out in the world. I've had a good sabbatical with making.
You know that that's that's a year down the track. Yeah, at the end of a twenty five. That's what I was just checking cheing.
No, I didn't mean that. I meant twenty twenty four. Oh yeah, you got here's the truth. Oh MYX, this is a probably gone now. So last ten years, you know, I've been raising guinea pigs and children and doing other projects. And my boys are six foot seven and they've just finished year twelve. My daughter's twenty one. I think you'll hear more from me next year, is what I'm saying.
I think I will. And you've got to meet yourself where you are every single day, and you've got to accept that you don't know what that's going to be today, So you've got to be flexible.
Are you giving me in verse now? Because I'm actually I'm listening because I was still wearing my mind. You got my full attention. Let's talk about this theoretically. So I'm someone who you know has lots of ideas, But am I not showing enough creative courage myself with these ideas? Like what would you advise? No, you've got too many. I'm just overwhelmed them. Yeah, there's a traffic jam. I
really love making work that is useful. I so admire people who are ambitious about fame in their career and so on, you know, within good reason. But I'm not really that. I don't think there's terrifically much value in fame or being known or sharing things of the world if they're not useful to someone, if they're not giving something.
Back, if it's not helpful. I agree in the loop. So with your Audible series, we'll finish on this. Thanks bab go to Audible and get it. I think it's just free if you remember amazing. I'm going to suggest I would like a workbook to go with it, beautiful, because I achieve different things when I consume media in different ways. The listening is one thing, writing is another, and seeing is another. So if you could just even if you just organize a workbook just for me, written
that accompanies. Yeah, that's the next thing.
Okay.
I'll look forward to getting it and talking to you again about that once it's released.
I can not tell you how much I appreciate being and guests on this crissy task business. Please come back. There is so much more to discuss. Claire bot Edge, I love you. Thanks for having friends.